Drive-to-store campaigns have a simple task and a difficult road to it. They are meant to get people to make their way into a store, even though the same purchase is two clicks away from the sofa. A discount alone will not do that. It works when the campaign offers a reason that can only be redeemed on site.
In a department store I was responsible for twelve such campaigns, alongside six TV commercials and around forty photo productions. That work is the source of the conviction behind this article: a campaign can bring people to the door. Whether they come back is decided by the store.
- Drive-to-store campaigns need an occasion that only makes sense on site.
- The store is part of the campaign, not its backdrop.
- Measurement estimates visits, it does not count them. That should be said openly.
- A steady rhythm across the year works better than single loud actions.
Table of contents
What drive-to-store campaigns really have to achieve
Many campaigns for physical retail are really online campaigns with an address at the end. They show product and price and hope the way into the store will follow on its own. It rarely does. Anyone who is supposed to move needs an occasion they cannot get online: an experience, advice, a selection you want to touch, or a moment that only happens in this place. A price advantage can strengthen that occasion, but it does not replace it. Whoever lures only with price trains customers to wait for the next price, and reaches the same result at a higher cost with every campaign.
Good drive-to-store campaigns therefore start with the question of what is better in the store than anywhere else. Only then come visual language, channels and budget. If that question has no honest answer, even the best creative work will not help. I have described how to get from that answer to a solid idea in the article on retail campaigns.
The store is the promise, not the backdrop
The most common disappointment happens at the door. The campaign promises something special, and on site nobody knows about it. The merchandise is not where the poster shows it, the team does not know the occasion, the floor looks like any other day. Then the campaign has brought people into the store only to disappoint them there.
I have learned to treat the floor as a channel of its own. Visual merchandising, staff and assortment receive the same briefing as the agency, and early enough. Only when the store visibly delivers on the campaign’s promise does a visit turn into an experience people remember.
Measuring drive-to-store campaigns without fooling yourself
Measurement is the trickiest part. Whether someone came into the store because of an ad can never be proven exactly. Advertising platforms estimate store visits from anonymised, extrapolated data and report them as modelled figures (see here: Google Ads Help, About store visit conversions). That is useful as long as you treat it as an estimate and not as a till receipt.
For drive-to-store campaigns I therefore use several signals side by side: footfall in the store, sales on the promoted areas, comparison with stores without the campaign, and the platforms’ modelled visits. None of these numbers is convincing on its own. Together they form a picture you can discuss honestly, including with the leadership team.
A rhythm across the year
A single loud action brings one busy Saturday. A rhythm builds a habit. Over time I stopped planning drive-to-store campaigns as one-off events and planned them as a fixed beat across the year, aligned with season, assortment and the big moments in the calendar. People learn that it is worth coming by at certain times. At the same time the impact becomes comparable, because every wave starts under similar conditions and you can see what changes from one to the next.
This beat also makes internal work easier. Store, buying and marketing plan towards the same dates, and every campaign builds on the lessons of the one before. More on how to build such a rhythm in the article on seasonal campaigns in fashion.
What I would do differently
I would involve the store staff even earlier. They are the people who ultimately keep the promise, and they are the first to notice when an idea does not work on site. A short conversation with them before launch would have saved some corrections during a running campaign.
I would also take reach and the store experience equally seriously. Moving images create attention, as I described in the article on the TV spot. But drive-to-store campaigns are not won in media planning. They are won in the place where a person arrives and realises the trip was worth it.